Were the glorious realization of the Overself devoid of any feeling, then the realization itself would be a palpable absurdity. It would not be worth having. The grand insight into reality is certainly not stripped of fervent delight and is surely not an arid intellectual concept. It is rightly saturated with exalted emotion but it is not this emotion alone. The beatific feeling of what is real is quite compatible with precise knowledge of what is real; there is no contradiction between them. Indeed they must coexist. Nay, there is a point on the philosophic path where they even run into each other. Such a point marks the beginning of a stable wisdom which will not be the victim of merciless alternation between the ebb and the flow of a rapturous emotionalism but will know that it dwells in timelessness here and now; therefore it will not be subject to such fluctuations of mood. Better than the exuberant upsurges and emotional depressions of the mystical temperament is the mental evenness which is without rise or fall and which should be the aim of the far-seeing students. The fitful flashes of enlightenment pertaining to the mystic stage are replaced by a steady light only when the philosophic stage is reached and passed through. The philosophic aim is to overcome the difference between sporadic intuitions and steady knowledge, between spasmodic ecstasies and controlled perception, and thus achieve a permanent state of enlightenment, abiding unshakeably and at all times in the Overself.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 4 : Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 22
